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Illuminating poetry since 1959

Posted on | Poetry

[HIS FEATURES UNFOLD IN FRONT OF ME.]

by

His features unfold in front of me. The five deer pause. Can’t I feign unfeeling for a moment more. I will be so good to you if you let me. I will throw myself in front of that which is inhospitable and strange again, but please not now. The deer begin to move from the canarygrass over the pavement path into more canarygrass, like an underline crossing over the spine-shadow of a xerox copy. My father rests in four seas and more time-zones, and ash washes off easier than I needed it to. Nothing is neutral anymore, everything tethered to him and often for no reason. The crawling absence of expression on the face which signals. The deer are complicit, somehow, and shameless with their valve-cap eyes. The first three have crossed. It’s never the right time for this. Another now, and the ground never seems like the right ground to weep on.

Marc-Anthony Valle is a Mixed-Black poet from the Pacific Northwest. His work has been published or is forthcoming in Beloit Poetry Journal, swamp pink, The Hopkins Review, and elsewhere.

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